George, a 28-year-old engineer from Bristol, had been working in an apprenticeship scheme for seven years, and had grown bored. “It seemed like I was into it, but in fact, I just never had the headspace to think about whether I liked it or not,” he tells me. Noticing his discontent starting to seep into his personal life, George took a bold decision. He threw caution to the wind, handed in his notice, and booked a one-way flight to Argentina. He used his savings to afford 10 weeks of cycling through rural Patagonia with his brother and a friend, who’d also quit their jobs.
George is one of many young workers taking a “micro-retirement” – a burgeoning lifestyle movement that’s gone viral on social media platforms and is growing in popularity among Gen Z and millennials. Unlike a sabbatical – which is a period off work granted by your employer – a micro-retirement is an indefinite career break taken to recover from burnout or to discover what you really want to do. “It’s so easy to start adult life down the wrong path,” says Alice Stapleton, a career-change coach. “Micro-retirements create an opportunity to reset and to re-evaluate what you enjoy and where you want to go next.”
